Haze: Exclusive Hands-On Preview

Nectar of the Gods

So, you want to know exactly what Nectar does? Not surprising because, as Rob rightly said, though a lot of media have mentioned the chemical nobody before bit-tech had had a chance to feel it in action. It was here that he let slip we were being treated to an early look of what would later be shown at Leipzig GC, as well as a few extra bits over the course of the day.

Nectar, I'll admit, functions a little differently to how I imagined. A chemical agent introduced directly to the bloodstream, Mantel troopers can use the distinctive yellow liquid to get a whole host of advantages. By default Nectar is mapped to L2 and tapping the button will give players a quick surge of the gunner's ambrosia, whilst holding the button charges a meter on the right hand side of the HUD to give a more controlled dose for longer battles.

It's probably worth mentioning that the HUD is also designed to look like the inside of Shane's helmet. While that doesn't seem noteworthy at first, bear in mind that when Shane switches sides he will end up without all his high-tech equipment and thus lose his HUD completely - players will have to listen for heart beats and heavy breathing to monitor Shane's condition.

After a fair amount of urging on from Rob and Derek, I boosted myself full of Nectar in the preview and tried my hand at combat.


"Nectar is a performance enhancer, literally," Derek said as I played. "It works by enhancing your ability to do all the things you would normally be doing in the game...We didn't want to give players some stupid slow-motion ability that wouldn't fit with the game. Instead, Nectar helps you do what you need to do."

As I administered the drug, I watched as the world around me slowly become more detailed and sharp. Enemies in the distance started to glow orange and when I bought my gun to bear on them then the crosshair, which is dynamic and fades to a dot when you aren't actively aiming, would help by drawing closer to the head.

"That's Nectar Perception; one of the powers which Nectar can give Mantel troopers," said someone in the room. I'm not sure if it was Rob or Derek honestly, I was too enveloped in the game to look away.

Suddenly, a shockwave-like pulse pushed out from the roots of a nearby tree. I knew what that meant from previous chats with Rob at Ubidays 2007 and I backed away as the grenade at the centre of the pulse blew up. The pulsing effect is a sign of Nectar Foresight, which gives troopers forewarning of nearby explosives. As I played more of the game, I also found out that a pulse originating outwards from the player is a signal of a melee attack about to meet the back of your skull.


Nectar also gives players access to a final power - the Melee Blast, a rifle butt that dishes out an explosion of concussive force and can be used to send physics objects (which have been designed with Ageia's PhysX software) into nearby enemies, or vice versa.

All in all, I was very impressed with the Nectar powers as they proved to be exactly as Derek had described - they complemented what gamers would already be doing and never descended into the lame and too-often trod path of slow-motion abilities and short-term invulnerability (yes, I'm looking at you Resurrection of Evil). Of course, that wasn't all that Rob and Derek had to show me and as we moved onto the next segment of the preview and I got a chance to play on the side of the Promise Hands rebels, I quickly came to appreciate how different the two gameplay styles were from each other.